


a curious, wanting thing

by softnow



Category: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (TV)
Genre: F/M, Season 3, You're Welcome, affair fic, fucking and feelings, in which nathaniel Feels A Lot Of Feelings, lots of emotions and lots of banging, that's pretty much it, the most tangential smut i've ever written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-12
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2019-05-21 08:27:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14911925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softnow/pseuds/softnow
Summary: rebecca never stays, and nathaniel's tired of her running away.





	a curious, wanting thing

**Author's Note:**

> so i was trying to write chapter 3 of _instructions for dancing_ , but nathaniel just wanted to Feel All The Feelings, so here we are. it's...essentially what it says on the tin. lots of emotions, lots of banging. shoutout to sarah for listening to me bitch about this for days. you the real mvp.

They have a lot of rules, which is okay with Nathaniel. He understands the necessity, and he’s always been good with rules—making them, enforcing them, following them. The same cannot be said for Rebecca. She’s patently awful at them—questioning them, ignoring them, breaking them. 

So they keep to their rules with mixed results. The one they’re the best at is _always text before coming over._ The one they break every time, without fail, is _this is never going to happen again._ The one they manage most of (but not all of) the time is _no more than once a day in the office_. And the one Nathaniel hates the most, just really truly despises, is _absolutely under no circumstances are there to be sleepovers. Ever._

Which is of course the one Rebecca manages to stick to with unflinching determination.

It’s not that he doesn’t understand it. He remembers _that morning_ as well as she does—the morning he’d forgotten his breakfast plans with Mona and she’d knocked on his door while he was enjoying a different sort of breakfast, the sort of breakfast involving him on his back and Rebecca’s thighs bracketing his head. His only saving grace was that he and Mona weren’t at the key-swapping stage yet. When he called Rebecca later that night to apologize, she’d been detached, subdued. She’d made the new rule then, and she’s proceeded to follow it with infuriating consistency.

So yes, he knows that it’s logical and fair. But that doesn’t stop him from absolutely detesting it. Every time she slips from his bed, leaving him naked and cold, he wants to scream. It reminds him of the one night stands he had before he met her, where the women would come and go, barely staying long enough to dent the pillow. He liked it then, getting to enjoy sex without having to navigate the do-we-cuddle-or-not grey zone of the night and the do-I-offer-you-breakfast-or-not grey zone of the morning. But then she’d come and crashed into his life and into his bed with her affinity for snuggling and her easy Sunday smiles and her soft skin warming his sheets, and he’d gotten used to it. He’d more than gotten used to it—he’d come to expect it, to crave it.

Two weeks of being allowed to have it and one much-too-short month of sneaking around to get it, and he’s big enough to admit he’d gotten a little spoiled. And then she’d ripped it away.

And he knows he should be happy that he still gets to have her at all—and he is, he _so_ is. Happy doesn’t even begin to describe the way he feels when she’s clutching him and gasping and pressing her hot little mouth to the underside of his jaw. But he would be hap _pier_ if she stayed, if she rested her cheek on his chest and looked at him with those sea glass eyes and made increasingly bad jokes until she fell asleep.

He knows it sounds disgusting. He’s very, very aware of just how pathetic it is. Wanting to spend time with her, wanting to _hold_ her—who _is_ he? The jilted lover in a two-and-a-half star movie? 

But he can’t help it.

He’s been thinking about it a lot lately, when he’s alone at night. And sometimes when he’s not alone, which makes him hate himself a little, but not enough to stop. And every time he thinks about it, he comes to the same conclusion: they need to break the rule. Which is hard, of course, because she’s so good at following it. Every time he tries to sweet talk her into staying, promises he’s checked his schedule twice, assures her there’s nothing to worry about, kisses her neck to convince her she really shouldn’t go, she just indulges him with that distant smile he’s becoming more and more familiar with and pats his arm.

“You know we can’t,” she says.

“You know there’s a lot of things we can’t do,” he wants to say. “You know we can’t do all of the things we just did. You know that didn’t stop us. You know that won’t stop us.”

“Just this once,” he usually says instead. “It’ll be fine, promise.”

But she doesn’t listen. She never listens. If anything, he supposes he should be relieved that she’s so consistent, even in this. She just twists out of his grasp and makes jokes— _what about the rules, Perfect Plimpton, wouldn’t want to ruin your reputation as a stickler._

He doesn’t tell her that she’s already ruined him, so what’s his reputation? He just lets her go, every time, without fail. Which makes him hate himself a little, but not enough to stop.

Until tonight.

Tonight, he is alone. Tonight, Mona is on a plane to Texas, to a conference, to no surprise appearances at his door.

He waits for the sun to go down, for it to be a little bit late, before he calls her. He tells himself he waits because he’s unsure, because he knows he should do something healthy instead. It’s easier than admitting he’s been thinking of this since Mona booked her flight.

When she answers the phone, he hears Paula and Valencia in the background and his heart sinks. But then he hears a door shut and she’s talking to him, low and intimate, asking him what he wants, and he’s so weak it’s sickening.

“You,” he blurts, cringing at the cheesiness, aching with the honesty.

He listens to her breathe, and then she says, “Give me half an hour.”

She appears at his door fifty minutes later looking like something out of a dream, fresh-faced and soft in an old grey sweater. It reminds him of another lifetime, one where he was free to do whatever with whomever, one where she could show up without texting first and leap into his arms. One where he could wrap her in his shirts and in his sheets and keep her all through the night.

Her shy smile only strengthens his resolve. He needs this. 

“Come on in,” he says, and once the door shuts behind her, her demeanor shifts, and _there_ she is, the girl who knocked him down, the girl who’s never stopped.

He carries her to bed and presses her to the mattress. She kisses him like it’s been years instead of days, and he’s relieved to find her tongue tastes only like sour candy and _Rebecca_. If she’d been drinking with the girls, he doesn’t think he could do it, could help her over the line she’s so carefully drawn.

She’s not wearing a bra, and it’s the best news he’s received all night. He rubs her through the heavy pile of her sweater until her nipples are firm and ready, and then a little more, because he loves the way she squirms. Her mouth finds his brow, his temple, his ear. She tongues the lobe, nipping in that way he likes, urging him to touch her in earnest with her breath and the roll of her body beneath his, whimpering when he doesn’t give in. He’s usually helpless to her wants, but not tonight. Tonight, he has other plans.

He continues to draw slow, teasing circles over her sweater with his thumbs while his mouth finds a new home on her neck. She smells clean and sweet, and she makes the most incredible noises when he sucks at her pulse point. She tilts her chin back and claws at his shoulders, and he drags his teeth over her sensitive skin until she gives him her first syrupy _fuck_. 

It won’t be her last.

“I thought about this all day,” he says, because he knows she likes it when he talks to her, and because it’s true.

“Yeah?”

“Mm-hmm. It made it very _hard_ —” He tweaks a nipple through her top. “—to get any work done.”

“TGIF,” she breathes. 

His traces a line up the column of her throat with his tongue and presses a kiss to her chin. “I could have taken you to the supply closet.”

“Why didn’t you?” She threads her fingers through his hair and scratches at his scalp and that’s the last full sentence she’s going to be able to form for a while, he decides.

“Because I want to take my time with you,” he says. She jerks her hips against his, and that’s good, that’s very good, he’ll reward her for that. He slips a hand beneath her sweater and palms her approvingly, pinching a nipple between two knuckles. He traces the shell of her ear with the tip of his tongue. “And because I want to hear you when you scream.”

“ _Fuck_ , Nathaniel.” Number two so soon, and she’s still fully clothed. What a great start.

He continues his mostly-over-the-clothes exploration of her body and lifts his hips away each time she tries to grind against him until her moaning and whining starts to take on an edge of desperation. He raises his head from the curve of her shoulder to look at her, at her brow furrowed in frustration, her mouth open and working around muted syllables. Her cheeks are as pink as her lips and _god_ she’s beautiful.

She must feel him watching, because she reaches up without even opening her eyes to tug him down for a hungry, insistent kiss. Her lips mash against his so tightly he can barely move, and he can’t help but think of their first kiss, how she’d held him to her like this and kissed him like she was exploding. It feels like ages ago now, but he can still remember how wound up he’d been that night. If she hadn’t taken him so totally by surprise and then ran away just as his brain caught up to his body, he thinks he could have had her right there on the elevator floor after all.

Distantly, he wonders if he could get her to work late with him one night next week, to be the last ones in the building. The high-pitched squeal of the emergency alarm isn’t his idea of mood music, but he thinks it has the potential to be the sexiest noise he’s ever heard if it’s mixed with the throaty sounds she makes when she comes.

But that’s neither here nor there, he reminds himself. What is here—here, right now, beneath him—is one delightfully aroused woman, arching and groaning against his mouth, in need of his care.

“You’re too dressed,” he says, tearing away from her.

She flashes him a frustrated look— _and who’s fault is that?_ —but she lifts up eagerly as he peels her sweater over her head. It lands somewhere in the vicinity of his bathroom door, and he tries not to think of a time when his whole apartment was blanketed in a layer of her clothes. Socks under the couch, jeans in the chair, dresses in puddles on the floor, wrinkled shirts on the bench. He’d complained about it then, waving her underwear (fished out from the rumpled mess of his unmade bed, another thing he’d complained about) at her like an accusation.

“My apartment is not your personal laundry basket,” he’d said. What a fool. A fool who never thought he’d miss tripping over her shoes and finding her pajamas forgotten on the bathmat. Disgusting.

He shoves away memories of her leaving her clothes like breadcrumbs for him to follow and focuses on her bare breasts instead, greeting them each with open-mouthed kisses. They rise and fall with her breath, steady like cresting waves. It’s hypnotic. He tongues the valley between them and tastes the hint of salt on her skin. Her hands slip beneath the neck of his shirt, her nails digging into his back, and he groans.

She loves this bit, he knows. The second or third time they did this, after he finished cataloging every inch of her chest with his lips and his tongue and the tip of his nose, she mentioned that nobody had done it like that before, treated it like an end rather than just a means. So he makes sure to do it right, kneading her, kissing her, sucking hard at the sensitive place where her left breast meets her ribs. She’ll have a bruise in the morning, an angry purplish imprint of his mouth. He wants her to have it, this proof of him on her body, almost as much as he wishes he could have some proof of her. The way she writhes beneath him and presses her hand to the back of his head tells him he’s not the only one who wants it.

When he gives her a little nip, she gasps _fuck_ and squeezes his hips with her knees. He grins against her skin. He’ll reward her for that, too.

He’s neglected her nipples for the other wonderful curves of her breasts since he took her top off, and they’re tight and red with waiting. He starts on the left and apologizes for his negligence with a gentle kiss, begs forgiveness with the tip of his tongue, pledges his devotion with the tug of his lips. Rebecca moans his absolution, but he repeats and repeats and repeats to make sure he’s more than paid the price. Then he replaces his mouth with his hand and turns his attention to her other nipple. He spends twice as long there, teasing and kissing and sucking until her back leaves the mattress and she yanks on his hair.

“God, that feels…” She pushes her shoulders back and rolls her hips. “ _Oh_. Please…”

He hums against her, and she groans, half in frustration, half in pleasure. His free hand skims over her stomach and undoes the button on her jeans. He pushes them down enough to work a finger between her legs, gliding over the crotch of her panties, feeling the slick evidence of her need. She hisses and bucks against his touch, and he wants to take it slow, he really does, but then she’s pulling him up to her mouth and kissing him in that loose, sloppy way that makes his brain short circuit, and _screw slow_. He shoves and she wriggles and they manage to get her pants off without breaking the kiss. Her legs wrap around his waist, drawing him tight against her, and he puts some weight into it, grinding down firmly. 

She rakes her hands down his back and gathers the hem of his t-shirt. He leans away long enough to let her pull it off and then presses into her again, hissing at the heat of her bare skin on his. 

“You feel so good,” he says, then kisses her smile. It’s his favorite part of her to kiss. Don’t get him wrong—he loves fitting his mouth to her collarbones and her wrists and her thighs and the base of her spine and the gentle pouch of her belly and the insides of her knees and yes, definitely yes, that hot, wet place between her legs. But her smile, god, that soft little curve that tells him she’s happy—that’s the part he likes best. 

It’s also the part that most frequently tempts him into trouble. When he sees her in the break room, laughing at one of Tim’s bad jokes—or in the bullpen, grinning at Paula—or in a meeting, rejoicing over some success—or in their shared office, greeting him good morning—it takes all of his willpower not to sweep his hand through her hair and guide her face up to his. It’s a horrifyingly unprofessional urge, one he channels into even more horrifyingly unprofessional actions—requests for pens, staplers, reams of paper. Anything to get her into that closet, into his arms. Anything to trace that smile with his own.

Here, though, he doesn’t have to worry about professionalism. There are other things he probably should be worried about—his own morals, for one—but it’s hard to worry about much of anything with Rebecca clinging to him, all hot and eager. 

One of her hands drifts down beneath the waistband of his pants and underwear to palm his ass, encouraging him to move against her.

“Want you,” she mumbles into the corner of his mouth, and he squeezes her hip.

“Soon.” He kisses her cheek and disentangles himself enough to slide down her body.

In the beginning, during those incredible two weeks, and even into the first few months of this—this— _thing_ (he refuses to think of it as an _affair_ , even if it is), they had nothing but time. They’d spent hours together in bed, in the shower, on the couch, learning each other’s bodies like new languages until they were as natural as their native tongues. Lately, though, it’s been rushed. Ten minutes here, twenty minutes there. One memorable occasion two weeks ago where he’d gotten her off in under five minutes on the couch in the lobby, just before everyone else started coming into work. And those hasty encounters certainly have their appeal, of course. The hungry way she tears at him, commanding him with her hips, wasting no time in taking what she wants—it fuels his fire in delicious, almost painful, ways. But if he has her tonight, he intends to _have_ her. 

He kisses the space below her belly button and parts her legs with his hands. She watches him expectantly, her teeth sunk into her bottom lip, as he traces a finger along the edge of her silky blue panties. 

“I like these,” he says.

“I wore them for you- _ooh_.” Her head falls back and her hands fist in his comforter as he tongues her through the fabric. 

“Come here.” He grips her by the hips and hauls her roughly to the edge of the mattress. He draws her underwear off, then drops to his knees between her legs. 

She dangles awkwardly, her lower half bent off the bed, and he lifts her thighs to rest on his shoulders. He presses a kiss to the inside of one, then the other, before turning his attention to the main event.

“ _Christ_ ,” he breathes, more to himself than to her, because she’s swollen and red and _wet_ , so fucking wet, and he can’t resist any longer.

One of the things he enjoys most about having sex with Rebecca—aside from the obvious, mind-blowing things—is how responsive she is. He never has to wonder how something feels, if it’s good for her, if she wants something else, because she’ll tell him, if not with her words, then with her body, or her hands, or the wonderful little noises she makes. So when he lowers his face to her and parts her with one long, smooth lick, he knows it’s _very good_ because her back bends and one of her hands shoots down to fist in his hair and her thighs squeeze around his cheeks. And when he swirls his tongue over her clit in tight little figure-eights, he knows that’s _very, very good_ because her heels dig into his back, pulling him closer, and she cries out, loud and clear. It’s not quite a scream, but it’s a promising start.

His mouth slides against her with practiced ease, finding all of the spots that make her tremble and whimper and thrust against his chin. He likes her like this, undone and moaning for him, gasping his name, begging _please_ and _more_ and _yes_. It’s easy to forget there are reasons they shouldn’t be doing this when his whole world is condensed into the flex of her stomach above him, the bite of her fingernails gripping his forearm, the taste of her on his tongue. 

He knows she’s getting close when her breathing starts to sound like an old rollercoaster—ratcheting up and up and stalling and slipping and catching. The hand in his hair tugs hard enough to hurt, and it’s getting tougher to breathe with the way her legs clench around him, but he doesn’t relent. He palms her ass, lifting her to get the angle just right, and all it takes is one more rough swipe of his tongue. Her body goes rigid and then she’s coming, spasming around him, babbling nonsense, and he loves it so much he wants to feel it again.

She sags into the mattress, and he eases but doesn’t stop, treating her to gentle kisses and feather-light touches. 

“Nathaniel, _mm_ , come on…” She tries to pull him up, but he catches her hand and threads his fingers through hers, squeezing softly. “You don’t have to— I already…”

Like he doesn’t know. Like he could have missed it, the way she explodes like a roman candle. 

_“I know I don’t have to,”_ he’d say if he wasn’t raised to not talk with his mouth full. _“But I love this and I love the way you come and I want you to feel so good you can’t walk tonight, Rebecca, can’t move, can’t think, can’t do anything but stay with me. Please say you’ll stay with me.”_

Really, it’s for the best that he can’t say any of it. That’s a humiliation he’d never live down.

He focuses instead on her body, on the way she’s starting to respond to him again, her hips moving in tiny jerks, her fingers tightening around his. He increases the pressure and ventures back up to her clit. The little nub throbs with overstimulation, but she gasps in a way that tells him she likes it, so he doesn’t stop.

Her second orgasm catches him by surprise, breaking as easily as the morning tide. She shudders and moans a single soft _oh_ before her body goes limp around him. 

Incredible.

He rests his cheek against her knee and gazes up at her, massaging one shaking thigh absently with the hand not still entwined with hers. She’s shiny with sweat and amazingly pink. Her eyes are closed, her lips parted but curved, and she’s breathing heavily. He tries to commit the image to memory. It’s so rare now for her to let herself bask in the afterglow, to lay with her arm draped over her forehead and her skin cooling and just _be_. She’s always moving, always slipping through his fingers like so much sand.

He wonders—not often, but sometimes, like now—if she does it so she doesn’t have to acknowledge whatever this is between them. If she thinks she can move fast enough to pretend it’s not happening. If she can only freeze time long enough to fuck him, never to stay with him. 

Which sucks, but it’s better than the alternative. It’s better than the idea that he’s completely wrong about whatever he thinks he sees in her eyes during quiet moments. The idea that he really is nothing more than a quick fix, something easy and meaningless to satisfy her urges. 

Ultimately, though, it doesn’t make a difference. He’ll take it, whatever it is. As long as he gets to see her like this, bare and sweet and beautiful, he’ll take it.

Which makes him hate himself a little, but not enough to stop.

“Hey.” Rebecca cracks her eyes, catches him staring. 

“Hi.” He doesn’t look away.

Slowly, the little curve of her mouth stretches into a shy grin. She looks young, hesitant, happy. She starts to say something, but he’s already climbing back onto the bed, sliding up her body to kiss her. 

“Mm,” she hums, raising a hand to trace his jaw. It’s a gentle kiss, exceedingly chaste in comparison to what he’s just done to her, but he feels it all the way down to his toes. 

He strokes her hair back from her face and kisses the space between her eyebrows. She’s still balanced precariously on the edge of the bed, so he helps her shuffle up to the pillows. She flops into them like she belongs there and drags him down beside her, catching him for another kiss. He stretches out along the length of her, careful to angle his hips away. He’s still hard—painfully so at this point—but he doesn’t want to rush her, not when she’s so soft and boneless next to him.

They kiss lazily for a long time, touching each other without any insistence. She combs her fingers through the crest of his hair. He brushes his knuckles along the curve of her waist. She giggles into his mouth when he hits a ticklish spot, and he does it again just to hear the sound. 

Eventually, though, she starts pushing against him a little harder, kissing him a little deeper. Her hand glides down his chest, and when she palms him through his jeans, he bucks and groans low in his throat. Encouraged, his own hands start to wander, sliding into her hair, revisiting her breasts, dipping between her thighs to find her slick and ready again. 

“Off,” she says, pulling at one of his belt loops. 

“Okay” is all he manages, grinding briefly against her hip before retreating to strip. 

She rolls onto her stomach to reach for the bedside table, and he can’t resist giving her ass a soft smack. She squeals and glances at him in a way that might be disapproving if she didn’t look so delighted. 

“Get over here.” She grabs a condom from his drawer and tears into the foil. 

He watches with heavy eyes as she wraps her tiny hand around his cock and squeezes, stroking him once, twice, before rolling the condom down. The pressure of her hand is enough to make him feel a little dizzy, and when she tries to pull him down on top of her, he shakes his head and moves to sit against the headboard.

“I wanna watch you,” he says, which is half true. The other half is that he’s afraid he’ll shoot off like a teenager if he’s in control right now.

Rebecca doesn’t seem to mind, though. She straddles him eagerly and rubs against him, gasping when the head of his cock nudges her clit. 

“Ready?” he asks, impressed that his voice still works. He feels like human electricity.

“Mm. Mm-hmm.” 

They kiss while he gets himself into position. Then she braces her hands on his shoulders and sinks down onto him in one fluid motion. The feel of her around him—so hot, so _tight_ , good lord, so tight—is enough to silence whatever thoughts might still be rattling around in his overexcited brain. His head falls back and cracks against the headboard, but he doesn’t even feel it, because she’s moving now, and _shit_ , he’s never going to get used to this.

His fingers dig into her hips, trying to keep her rhythm slow and steady. As much as he wants her to ride him into oblivion—which, let’s be clear, is _very, very much_ —he wants to actually last and make it good for her even more. He breathes slowly through his nose, conjures all of that old water polo stamina, and rocks up to meet her on her next thrust. 

“Oh,” she gasps, swiveling her hips in a way that threatens to kill him right here. At least he’ll go happy. “Oh, yeah. That’s…yeah.”

He grunts in agreement and watches her, his eyes darting from the fresh sheen of sweat on her forehead to her tongue darting out to wet her lips to the swing of her breasts as she rocks in his lap. Heat gathers at the base of his spine and he grits his teeth. _Not yet._ His thumb finds her clit and rubs it roughly. Her rhythm falters, then resumes, but she doesn’t raise up so far now, keeping him deep within her. 

“Fuck, you feel good,” he groans.

She whimpers. Her head tilts back, dark curls cascading over her shoulders. Her eyes screw shut and her forehead wrinkles as she chases her release. She looks like every good dream he’s ever had. 

“That’s it,” he says, barely aware that he’s talking. “Give it to me. Come on.”

Her mouth opens in a silent cry that turns into a real cry when he tangles his free hand in her hair and pulls.

“Oh god,” she pants. “Oh god, oh god, _ohgodohgodoh_ —”

She comes with a sob, and the flutter of her muscles around him is nearly enough to bring him over the edge, too. But then she’s lifting, her thighs tensing, so lost in her own pleasure that he nearly slips out of her and _that_ won’t do. 

Nathaniel wraps his arms around her to keep her tight against his chest and tips them over. She’s still quaking against him, but when her back hits the mattress, she gasps and looks up at him in surprise. There’s a split second where he’s afraid he’s overstepped, but she wraps her arms tight around him and buries her face in his neck.

“Let go,” she murmurs, and that’s all it takes.

He drives into her relentlessly, sinking in deep and fast, the tingle in his lower back building until it’s nearly all-consuming. She moans against him, and the sound goes straight to his pelvis.

“Fuck, Rebecca, I’m gonna—”

“Uh-huh.” 

She pulls her knees up to squeeze his sides, and the new angle is absolutely dirty. Blood pounds in his temples and hot white light blossoms behind his eyelids. He manages to graze her jaw with some semblance of a kiss before he’s spilling into her, his hips pistoning wildly, his breath coming in harsh gasps. She makes a choked noise and quivers around him, and they collapse together in a sweaty, breathless heap.

He noses her temple mindlessly, relishing the feel of coming down with her. Her heartbeat thrums beneath her skin, and he loves it, this steady reminder of her life. When he can finally think again and realizes what happened, he pulls back to meet her eyes.

“Wait, was that— Did you…?”

She laughs at the amazement on his face and scratches his back soothingly.

“A little one,” she says with a shrug.

A primal, male pride fills his chest and he kisses her soundly. “That’s hot.”

“Mm, you’re hot.” She stretches against him, then wriggles and looks pointedly down to where they’re still joined. “Like, actually hot. And kind of sticky. Let me up, Casanova.”

That’s the last thing he wants to do, but he lifts off her gently, careful not to lose the condom. She scoots off the bed as soon as he’s out of the way and shuffles to the bathroom. His gaze lingers on her back until she shuts the door, then he moves to clean up. 

He pulls on a clean pair of boxers, pausing to grin to himself when he finds her underwear halfway under the chair next to his bed. He doesn’t even remember flinging them that far, and he turns to survey the rest of his apartment. It’s a mess. Her purse is on the floor in front of the door, and her shoes lay abandoned halfway to the bed. Their clothes litter the floor around the bed, and his comforter is wrinkled and bears an incriminating damp patch. His chest swells at the sight of it all.

He hears the toilet flush and the sink turn on, and he pads quickly to the kitchen to get her a glass of water. The clock on the microwave tells him it’s eleven thirty. His stomach clenches and he rushes back to the bedroom just as she’s coming out of the bathroom.

“Hey. Here.” He hands her the glass and perches on the corner of the bed. 

She drinks off half of the water, then holds it out to him.

“Thanks,” he says, and catches her around the waist to pull her into his lap. He kisses her shoulder and strokes his thumb over the crease where her thigh meets her hip. 

“So I guess I should…” She kicks her toe against her discarded jeans, and he tightens his arm around her, his stomach dropping.

“Or not.”

“Nathaniel…”

“It’s late,” he says, taking a sip of water and trying to appear more nonchalant than he feels. “And you’ve gotta be tired after all of that.”

Rebecca laughs, the sound reverberating through his chest.

“Oh, god, your ego is going to be even worse now, isn’t it?”

He nuzzles her hair. “I mean, four in a row’s pretty impressive.” He leans over to set the glass on the floor and wraps both arms snugly around her. “You can’t tell me you’d rather go home to your awful bed when you could just sleep here.”

She gazes up towards the pillows and bites her lip, and he doubles down.

“Think of how good you feel right now.” He brushes his mouth over her collarbone and kisses the hollow of her throat. “Why undo it before you have to?”

She leans into his touch and drapes an arm around his neck. He takes it as a small victory.

“Because we can’t,” she says, but she doesn’t sound as convinced as she usually does.

“Sure we can.” He kisses her chin. 

“No, Nathaniel, what about Mo—”

_Don’t._

He silences her with the press of his lips to hers. He doesn’t want to think about Mona right now. He doesn’t want _Rebecca_ to think about Mona right now. He doesn’t want to think about anything but this, his messy apartment and her messy hair, his tired limbs and her bruised skin. He wants to pretend, if only for tonight, that this is all that matters.

“Nothing to worry about. I promise. Hey.” He cups her face in his hand when she starts to pull away and strokes her cheek with his thumb. “It’s fine. Really.”

“I shouldn’t…”

“It’s just one night.” He leans in to kiss her again. “Stay. Please.”

There’s hesitation in her eyes, and he knows if she says no, he’ll have to let her go, and that’ll be it. They’ll go back to quickies in the supply closet and lingering glances over their shared desk and the occasional brush of hands in the break room. And sometimes she’ll come over on Friday nights, like tonight, and it’ll be incredible until it’s not, until he’s naked in bed, watching her get dressed, watching her slip out into the night. And he won’t hold her, won’t wake up to her hair in his face and her sleepy eyes and the warmth of her body curled into his side. And he’ll have to live with that, pretend that it’s okay, pretend that all of this is a-okay. 

His chest aches and he knows how he’s looking at her. He knows she can see the want in his eyes, the plain, disgusting longing, which makes him hate himself a little, but not enough to stop.

“One night,” she says at last, and he can breathe again. He grins and kisses her, but she pushes him back firmly by the shoulders. She levels him with her sternest gaze. “But that’s _it._ This can never happen again, okay? None of it.”

“Right. Absolutely. Never again.”

When he kisses her this time, she melts into him, and it’s warm and slow and sweet until it’s cut off by her yawning.

“See?” he says, patting her on the ass. “You’re too tired to drive anyway.”

“Yeah, yeah. Not my fault somebody wore me out.” She leans her head against his shoulder. “Take me to bed.”

“We’re on the bed.”

She huffs. “Put me _in_ the bed, then.”

“So demanding,” he says, but he scoops her up anyway, bending to yank the covers down with one hand before dropping her onto the mattress. 

She bounces with a little yelp, then _ooh_ s as she stretches against the sheets. He remembers the first time she slept here, after the masquerade. She’d made a big deal out of his sheets, how soft they were, how she hadn’t expected someone like him to splurge on such a luxury. And what had he said? _What can I say? I like the finer things in life._ Something like that. Now, looking at her cocooning herself in his blankets, her dark hair splashed across the pillow, he’s struck by how true that is. He can’t imagine anything finer.

“You coming?” she mumbles, already buried in a mound of cotton.

He turns off the lights and slides in next to her, reaching for her automatically. She tenses and he can feel her calculating, but then she yields to his touch, rolling over to rest her head on his chest. He kisses her crown, hiding his smile in her hair. She’s warm and solid and real against him, and he’s missed this. God, he’s missed this. He’s missed this an embarrassing amount. He holds her closer, relaxing when she drapes an arm over his stomach and threads one of her legs through his.

The last time he had her like this—it was the night before _that morning_. The last night things were good, truly good, before she started pulling away from him, keeping him at a distance. They’d had Chinese that night. Well, she’d had Chinese that night. But he had stolen a few bites of her chicken and kissed the soy sauce from her mouth. Then they’d had sex right there on the living room floor, and he’d gotten rug burn on his knees, and she’d laughed and told him it was his own fault for being too impatient. They stayed up late, he remembers, just talking. She’d been relaxed and open, draped in one of his t-shirts and nothing else, and it had felt like they were still together. Really together.

What would have happened if Mona had never shown up the next morning? How long would they have gone on like that, playing pretend together, almost able to forget the reasons why they couldn’t? His stomach sours at the idea that he could have had months and months of that, of her here with him and not running as soon as she’d come, even if it wasn’t real. 

He looks down at her on his chest, her eyes closed, her breathing already slow and steady. He smooths her hair and kisses her head again and she shifts, just barely, to rest more heavily against him. 

It isn’t real. None of this is real. He has a _girlfriend_ , for Chrissake, no matter how much he’d rather ignore that fact. But it _feels_ real. Her, here, now…it feels too real. And he’s all too willing to play pretend a little longer if it means he can continue to feel like this. 

He has the weekend. Mona—his _girlfriend_ , the one he doesn’t want to think about, and he hates himself for that, but not enough—isn’t due back until Monday afternoon. He knows Rebecca would blanch at the idea of spending a whole weekend here, but he also knows how easily persuaded she can be, and what if he just…keeps inventing reasons for her to stay?

Now that he thinks about it, he’s pretty sure there are still some frozen hash browns in his freezer. The morning after she’d come back from Buffalo and literally jumped him, she’d asked him for breakfast and he’d had nothing but three grapefruits and a bottle of protein powder. She’d made him drive her to the store right then, and they’d bought “the essentials”—eggs and sausage and thick white bread and real butter and hash browns. The other stuff is gone by now, but she never finished the hash browns, and _he_ certainly never finished the hash browns, so surely they’re still there. 

So he’ll start with breakfast. Well, no. _First_ he’ll start with her coming on his fingers. He has his priorities. But then he’ll start with breakfast. And then he’ll offer her a shower, because he knows she loves his shower, and he’ll take her up against the wall and then wash every inch of her while she catches her breath. And then… Then he’ll worry about lunch. But first, breakfast.

He squeezes her close and lets himself be lulled by the soft snuffle of her breath. 

It’s the best sleep he’s had in months.

** \- - - **

When he wakes, his apartment is warm with Saturday morning light, but his bed is cold. 

She doesn’t call, and he doesn’t mention it when he sees her on Monday.

He throws away the hash browns.


End file.
